Saturday, October 06, 2007

Progressive Imperialism

How do men like Kanan Makiya, a former Trotskyist, come to support the US-led multinational empire? I imagine that they begin with a perfectly reasonable observation (see 1 below) and then in some cases slowly, in other cases rapidly, proceed to one untenable conclusion after another (2-4).

Some Third-World states sometimes illegitimately use the rhetoric of anti-imperialism to squash legitimate internal criticism and hold back work on urgent social and cultural issues such as women's rights and freedom of sexuality.

All Third-World states always illegitimately use the rhetoric of anti-imperialism to squash legitimate internal criticism and hold back work on urgent social and cultural issues such as women's rights and freedom of sexuality. It is always wrong to prioritize anti-imperialism.

As a matter of fact, those who decry imperialism are the worst imperialists themselves.

Democracies in the West, especially the USA and Europe, can and should help liberate people from their oppressive and imperialist tyrants in the Third World. If that, too, is imperialism, it's at least a better imperialism, progressive imperialism, much like the French Revolution's export of the revolutionary Enlightenment, or the Vietnamese Communists' overthrow of the genocidal Pol Pot.

Unfortunately, when leftists become former leftists, bidding farewell to anti-imperialism, their erstwhile immersion in the Marxist tradition helps them think in this fashion, for Marxism without anti-imperialism becomes a variant of liberal progressivism and internationalism.